Damsel in Distress
by Deadly Poppy
Summary: Sometimes you have to chase love, even if there is a chance you might not be fast enough. In which Katie has an odd dream and a sudden realization, and Rapunzel loses her hair.


**AN: This was written for a Fair Tale Challenge, and I chose Rapunzel. I don't own Harry Potter or Rapunzel by the way. Hope you enjoy this enough to review, hint, hint! Wink, wink!**

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"Oh fair princess, where art thou?"

I walk gracefully over to the window, carefully avoiding stepping on my freakishly long hair. "O, Price Charlie!" I exclaim, delighted to find the love of my life standing at the bottom of my tower with a dozen red roses.

"Princess Katherine," he calls up to me. "Let down your hair so that I may climb it and keep you company in your tower!"

"But the evil Witch Minerva is due back at any time! What if she finds thou here?" I call back, fearful for my love.

"Then let her find me!" he cried back gallantly. **(AN: This is starting to sound like the Romeo & Juliet Balcony scene…) **"And we shall fight her off together! For I would die for you, my love, and my life would be complete only in having met you at all!"

I blush and throw my hair over the side. Instead of cascading gracefully over the edge, however, my hair falls with a dull thud, and I realize with contempt that I have just hit my love in the face with it.

"Sorry!" I call down, for lack of a better apology.

"Do not worry, Love!" he calls back, sounding winded. "For I am barely injured!" He takes hold of my hair, and just when I am beginning to second guess this whole idea of using my hair as a rope, I feel a sharp tug, and my dark, braided locks fall to a heap at my prince's feet, and I am left with average, frizzy blonde hair.

"Um…dearest one?" he calls to me, confused. "I think you've lost something."

I bite my lip. "I'll explain later!" I yell back, searching frantically for something else with which to pull him up. "Aha!" I shout, finding an old broomstick. I stick it out the window, very nearly poking him in the eyes. "Grab hold of this," I instruct him.

Again, I feel a sharp tug, but instead of the broom slipping from my hands, I tumble out the window with it! I fall into Prince Charlie's arms, but instead of catching me like a proper Prince Charming, he tumbled to the ground with a very ungentlemanly _Oomph!_

"You've put on weight," he mutters.

"What was that, love?" I asked, batting my eyelashes.

He smiles innocently. "Nothing, my darling."

And then, of all the dumb, rotten, badly-timed luck in the world, Minerva McGonagall, the evil witch herself, chooses that moment to show up, pointing a bony finger, nearly indistinguishable from the wand in her other hand, at me. "You!" she cries. "Get back here!"

And then we run. Me and the dearest love of my life. We run, and we run, and ew run…

"Katie!" a voice cries, and I am trying to catch up with Prince Charlie but I can't make it, and he's leaving me behind, and I can't run fast enough, and he's calling my name…

"Katie! Katie!"

And then someone punches me in the shoulder, and I jump, and suddenly I am in a bed at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, and all I can think to say is, "He left me."

"I'm sorry Kates," Fred says, sounding like he really means it. "But he left this morning."

I bite my lip, resisting the urge to cry. But once one tear gets loose they all do, and within moments I'm sobbing into Fred's shoulder. "I couldn't run fast enough," I cry. "And my hair fell out, and I jumped through a window for him, and he still left me!"

Fred doesn't have the slightest clue what I'm talking about, but he just continues to pat my back, even though I'm getting his shirt all snotty, and then suddenly it hits me, and just like in the dream I know I have to run, and even though I might not catch up I have to keep on running after him because if could be my only chance.

So I stand up, surprising Fred, dear, sweet Fred, who played the part of my knight in shining armor for the morning, but right now I don't need a knight, I need Charlie.

Charlie Weasley, who plays with dragons all day and comes to headquarters smelling of Dragon Dung. Charlie, who used my toothbrush and didn't tell me. Charlie, who can't cook, and can't sing, and doesn't even know how to cast a simple cleaning spell but somehow I love him anyway.

And somehow, last night when he asked me to come back to Romania with him, because he couldn't bear to leave me here to face an oncoming war, somehow the stubborn little girl in me resisted, but now there's only one thing to do.

"I'm going to Romania."


End file.
